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Updated: June 10, 2025
The costers I saw were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly these gentlemen habitues of the Cave of the Innocents wore few or no velvet pants, and guzzled little or none of the absinthe. Their favorite tipple appeared to be beer; and their female companions snuggled closely beside them.
So, as Lord Shaftesbury had been kind to the costers and taken such interest in their pursuits, they invited him to a special meeting, at which they presented him with a splendid donkey. Over a thousand costers with their friends were there, when the donkey, profusely decorated with ribbons, was led to the platform.
"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers outside whom we did not know.
I didn't," he said. "Not 'arf! But, lu'mme, eyen't he funny?" Weel, after a', a manager can no do mair than his best, puir chiel. They thocht they were richt when they would no give me a turn. They thocht they knew their audiences. But the two costers could ha' told them a thing or two.
The costers and clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir, to the doctor, but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking against the umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn.
Bob did not often visit The Chequers, for he was a wealthy fellow, and he liked best to fool his time away in flash billiard-rooms; but he knew me well enough, and I was on as easy terms with him as with the costers and Rommany chals. I say was when I speak of him. Ah me!
I hear the grind of heavy traffic, the struggle of horses on the frost- breathed ground, the decorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cab bells, the sharp warning of bicycles at the corner, the swift rattle of costers' carts as they go south at night with their shouting, goading crew.
The London costers the pearl-buttoned men who drive the little donkey carts subscribed to $1,000 worth of Certificates in a single week, although they had made a previous investment of $4,000. In hundreds of factories the idea has taken root. In some of them War Savings subscriptions are obtained by means of deductions from wages.
There were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots the high-up ones were already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights.
Sometimes I endeavoured to contrive a doubtful exhilaration from the contrast which these meaner streets afforded; saying to myself, as I pushed my way through the costers' stalls of Great James Street, 'Now you are exchanging squalor for magnificence. Be prepared for a surprise. But the ruse failed utterly, and my mind laughed aloud at the pitiful imposture.
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